VATICAN CITY — In the final days before the secretive ritual that saw the election of the first American leader of the Catholic Church, U.S. President Donald Trump posted an extraordinary AI mock-up of himself as pontiff, drawing condemnation — and more than a little exasperation — from Church leaders.
It was just one of many Trumpian intrusions into a conclave the president couldn’t resist inserting himself into, having already overshadowed Pope Francis’ funeral with his peace negotiations while endorsing favored papal candidates.
Clerics were “reluctant” to elect a pope from the global superpower, one cardinal told POLITICO. But in the end, when the 133 cardinal voters sequestered themselves in the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday to elect the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, they settled on not just an American but one who could, plausibly, act as a counterweight against the impulsive U.S. president.
This was not wholly by chance. When the cardinals eventually found unity on a new pontiff, the progressives among them were aware that Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost, a 69-year-old former missionary with a mixed heritage, was a leader who could provide an alternative voice to Trump, according to the person quoted above and another cardinal. Prevost was anointed Pope Leo XIV on Thursday.
While it was not the driving factor behind the decision, which was guided by subtler internal considerations, having an American pope who could provide a counterweight to the rhetoric of Trump was a “supplementary gift,” one of the clerics told POLITICO, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk about private discussions.
And indeed, on paper, Pope Leo seems to stand against almost everything the U.S. president represents.
Leo XIV is expected by progressive observers to continue the humane approach to the papacy that angered the MAGA crowd and was favored by Francis, broadly supporting his predecessor’s efforts to make the Church more tolerant of groups that it has historically persecuted.
In contrast to Trump’s isolationism, Leo XIV is also expected to continue Francis’ efforts to more greatly involve communities in the developing world, a rising power force in the global Church whose leaders are said to have given him critical support during the conclave.
‘Very important issue’
Perhaps the biggest issue on which Trump and the new pope disagree is that of migration.
While the president continues his mass deportations of undocumented migrants from the U.S., Leo is “in favor of migrants, in favor of refugees, in favor of human rights; he stands with the poor,” said the person quoted above. He even has a Peruvian passport, this person pointed out.
“He is certainly a problem for Trump as he has taken a very serious position and represents the America that Trump detests, those that speak Spanish,” said Alberto Melloni, a professor of History of Christianity at the University of Modena. “Using Spanish and Italian and not English in his first greeting on Thursday night was a deliberate cruelty by Prevost.”
Walter Kasper, a 92-year-old German cardinal too old to participate in the conclave, told POLITICO that migration was a “very important issue” for cardinals during the pre-conclave huddles, which often hold enormous sway over the eventual outcome. Trump’s treatment of migrants is “terrible,” he said. “Coming from both the U.S. and Peru, [Leo] understands the problem very well.”
The issue of migration will be important for this pontificate, Kasper said, adding that the new pope “has a lot of experience on this.”
Leo’s own opinion on the Trump administration is already plain to see.
An X account widely believed to be linked to the the new pontiff sharply criticized the Trump administration’s stance on migration in April. And after donning the white cassock on Thursday, Leo wasted little time setting himself up as a voice to defend migrants, decrying “the neglect of mercy, and the appalling violations of human dignity” among those who lack faith — which could be read as a reference to growing anti-migrant rhetoric in his home country.
Healing the U.S. ‘schism’
But the impetus behind the push for Prevost wasn’t solely about the man in the White House.
More than just being about Trump, it may also have had to do with the broader, corrosive influence of U.S. politics on the U.S. Catholic Church, which in recent years has bifurcated into warring, frequently rebellious factions split between hardline progressives and MAGA-aligned traditionalists, alarming clergy in Rome. Traditionalists in particular claimed they were being actively persecuted by Francis and openly challenged his rule, leading at least some to wonder whether the U.S. Church would eventually decisively break with the Holy See.
It’s a situation Church leaders can’t risk letting get out of control. There’s a recognition among cardinals that “without the American church, there is no church,” one Vatican insider told POLITICO, going so far as to call the North American Church “schismatic.” (Indeed, one former Vatican ambassador to the U.S., Carlo Maria Viganò, was dramatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church last year for the explicit sin of “schism.”)
When the cardinals settled on Prevost, according to that person and the conclave participant quoted above, many were conscious that he was somebody who could help heal those divisions.
“He will have an influence on the American Church for sure, as he’s American and he’s from Chicago which is more open, more progressive,” said the conclave participant. He pointed out that Leo XIV had already signalled a willingness to reconcile with traditionalists with plans to move into the Apostolic Palace, the sumptuous Vatican City residence that was the home of previous popes before Francis moved into the more austere Santa Marta guesthouse.
Moving into the palace is “like saying to the right, ‘We’re not against you,” the person said. He insisted the new pope would have no desire to antagonize conservatives given that the prevailing desire among cardinals before his election was for “unity.”
The new pope could also “reinterpret,” without rolling back, some of Francis’ more contentious progressive moves, such as his declaration permitting blessings for individuals in same-sex couples, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the progressive archbishop of Luxembourg, told a handful of reporters including POLITICO in a side-room of the Nuova Chiesa church in Rome on Friday.
Some of the traditionalists have already expressed hope that Prevost will strike a more conciliatory tone. Edward Feser, a Catholic professor of philosophy at Pasadena City College, suggested on X that while the new pope’s theology skewed progressive, he seemed like a more “reasonable man [who] might have been talked out of Francis’s more problematic decisions.” Pointedly, Prevost has already met in person with the influential American cardinal Raymond Burke, a hardline Francis critic who consistently complained about the late pope’s efforts to curtail the Tridentine Mass, an older variety of the Latin mass favored by traditionalists.
That move has in turn set off unease among some moderates, with one worrying to POLITICO that traditionalists might become a “force in the Church” after Francis was able to largely reduce their influence.
MAGA holdouts
But none of that means Prevost will necessarily be able to satisfy the more vehement forces in MAGA world, who have already prejudged him as a subversive leftist after his comments on migration.
After Prevost’s ascension, Laura Loomer, an American far-right political activist and Trump adviser, ranted about the “woke Marxist pope” and claimed he “is anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, pro-open Borders, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis,” adding that it’s “gross” that he is now in charge of the Vatican. Notably, Loomer is not Catholic, but Jewish, indicating the importance of the symbolism of the pope even for Washington’s non-believers.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and an ultraconservative Catholic, said Prevost’s election as the first U.S.-born pontiff had been a vote against his old boss. It was “the worst choice for MAGA Catholics,” Bannon said, calling the election of Leo XIV “an anti-Trump vote by the globalists of the Curia.”
But Cardinal Hollerich, who was close to Francis, said that wasn’t quite right. “We didn’t elect an anti-Trump, we elected a disciple of Jesus,” he said. However, “the fact is that he is an American citizen — so there is also this consequence.”
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